IT isn’t in the kicker’s nature to pout, so Matt Bryant hadn’t let the old words fester, he’d shrugged off the slander as heat-of-the-moment anger. Yes, he’d forgiven Tiki Barber. But he hadn’t forgotten. And neither, as it turns out, had Barber.

“It takes a lot to make me cry,” Barber had told Bryant late yesterday afternoon, his voice reduced to a rasp, a few moments after Bryant’s 39-yard field goal had humbled the Eagles, 10-7, in overtime and delivered the Giants to the playoffs. “But you just made me cry.”

He did, too. Bryant could notice the still-fresh tracks under Barber’s eyes. He could hear the thick emotion strangling Barber’s words, and the kid couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony. It’s funny how football works out sometimes.

Thirty-four days earlier, Barber had called out Bryant as forcefully as a teammate can, all but indicting the rookie for the Giants’ 16-14 loss to the Texans in Houston.

“We couldn’t kick a freaking field goal. That was the problem,” Barber had said that day in the visitor’s locker room in Houston, referring to a key Bryant miss in the fourth quarter. “I can’t say we played perfect on offense or defense, but when we need a kick, we need a kick.”

Yesterday, it was Barber who needed a kick. It was Barber who needed to be rescued. Somehow, during a game that should have been the signature performance of his career, a game in which he had piled up 203 yards of rushing and another 73 receiving, it had nearly been Barber who’d single-handedly slammed a padlock shut on the Giants’ path to the playoffs.

He’d fumbled four times. He’d lost three of them, the last at the Giants’ 26-yard line. David Akers bailed him out then, duck-hooking a 35-yard field goal. In response to that reprieve, Barber managed to put the ball on the ground a fourth time, in overtime, before throwing himself on the ball and the mercy of his teammates.

“I wanted to put my foot somewhere,” Kerry Collins quipped afterward.

There were 78,782 others who would have waited in line behind him. Only a funny thing happened after that fourth fumble: Collins handed Barber the ball again, on the next play, same as he’d kept handing him the ball despite his continuing day-long misadventures.

Eric Studesville, Barber’s position coach, had explained it this way: “We rode you all the way here, and we’re going to ride you all the way through.”

Later on, Jim Fassel would echo that: “Everyone was asking me if we should get [Ron] Dayne in there and I said, ‘Nope, he’s the guy who got us here, he’s the guy who’s gonna win it for us.’ “

There was no way to explain any of it. Barber was at the peak of his powers, he kept finding holes in a terrific Eagles defense and throwing one Barry Sanders move after another at it.

Only one problem: He kept dropping the football. Again. And again. And again. And again.

“I’m going to walk away from here with an ulcer,” Barber’s wife, Ginny, said with a halting smile after the game. “I mean, the one thing Tiki never does is give up the ball, and suddenly it was like he was losing it every time he touched it. He talked about going through a gamut of emotions on the field? He should have tried the view from the stands.”

“I thought he was trying to kill us,” Tiki’s mother, Geraldine, said with a laugh.

It was Bryant who kept everyone sane, who kept everyone happy, who allowed Barber to collapse onto the Giants’ bench and weep tears of thanks and relief. It was Bryant – of all people – who saved Barber from an offseason over-stuffed with regret.

“Matt’s turned it around,” Barber said through a sheepish grin. “And that’s what I told him after the game.”

Bryant found all of this quite amusing. Five weeks earlier, he’d stoically accepted Barber’s harsh assessment with a shrug, saying, “Well, he’s right.”

Yesterday, he was just as calm, just as expressionless, as he accepted Barber’s postgame praise.

“I’m not the kind of guy who holds a grudge,” Bryant said. “I’ve got a job to do and I try to do it. Sometimes you do it well. And sometimes you make mistakes.”

He chuckled again and shook his head. Yeah. It’s funny how football works sometimes.